Something Gold, Part Two

[ht_murray]

Soundtrack|Part One|Part Two| Part Three| Part Four--The End|DVD extras aka Author notes|


Something's different. Even with his brain swelling in his skull and something like a foam mattress set shoved down his throat, Sam has enough wherewithal to know he had way too much to drink if Dean looks different than he remembers. When did Dean's hair get so long, and when was the last time he shaved for Christ's sake? He's totally got some kind of Mad Max thing going on, and Sam's pretty sure that didn't happen in the blink of an eye.

Dean doesn't seem to notice Sam's awake, and that's just fine with Sam, because he's in no mood for Dean's jibes about whatever Celine Dion song Sam was singing karaoke to, or the greasy sausage probably left on the side of the bed just to make him puke. He stifles a groan and rolls back into the pillows where he fully intends to stay until he can at least remember last week. Last night will be longer in coming. He knows from past experience.

All five of them.

He reminds himself for the fifth time in his life to never, ever get that drunk again. Ever. Never.

Dean's a bad influence. Anyway, that's Sam's story, and it works for him.

God, he hasn't felt this shitty since...well, he can't remember the last time. And it's probably best to pretend he's still asleep, because Dean, no doubt, remembers. Dean never lets him forget.

Sam's pretty sure his baby book burned along with his first booties, and the little knit cap he wore home from the hospital after he was born. But he's equally sure Dean's got another book somewhere filled with things that are no less momentous but should in no way, shape, or form ever see the light of day. Probably has a quirky, twisted little title on it, like, "Sam Winchester: The Bed-Wetting Years, A Big Brother's Anthology of Snot Noses and Creamed Jeans."

"Fuck! That's gonna leave a bruise..."

A thunk followed by a tinny vibration pounds him over the head, hurts enough to make his eyes water down the back of his throat. He swallows and imagines he's drinking brain juice squeezed from his skull like a sponge. Yeah, now that's appetizing. If he hadn't already been on the verge of puking, that would've started the bile geysers pumping.

Newsflash. Bile mixed with stomach acid and a steady stream of swallowed spit? Hurts. Groaning at this point would be stupid and painful, but so is thinking. His brain doesn't get the memo until after he lets out a moan, and he has to throw an arm over his head to dampen the pounding. So much for pretending to be asleep.

Through squinted eyes, he catches Dean jerking a glance in his direction from in front of the window. He's got one finger sucked between lips like he's pinched it or cut it, two others wrapped in Band-Aids. Sam half wonders what the hell he's up to over there, but aborts the mission and clamps his eyes shut again.

"You might wanna shower before you pass out again. Those shorts have got to be gross." It's the kind of statement that should probably have more bite to it than it does.

Sam grunts. "Whatever." Dean's the one who always forgets to wash the underwear he's wearing on laundry day and ends up one pair short. Sam's underwear are... He takes mental inventory, and just as he thought, his underwear are... Eeugh. Friggin' nasty. "Son. Of. A. Bitch."

"Told ya," Dean says with a shrug before turning back to the window.

Sam slides his feet around to the side of the bed and onto the floor without opening his eyes. "Dude, I do not want to know." He ventures to glare out from under the ridge of his furrowed brow.

"Oh, sure. You don't remember. That's classic." Dean's open-mouthed frown is so not cute. "I'm hurt, man. Truly. Deeply. Down in my..." He thumps on his chest with the hand he's just been nursing, one finger reddened against his white t-shirt. "...down in my SOUL."

Sam blinks, which ain't easy with his forehead pinned over his eyelashes. He can't tell if that's all sarcasm or if there's something truly bitter in Dean's tone. Best sarcasm is always twisted truth. Dean goes back to doing whatever it is he's doing with the A/C unit, talking mostly to himself, which suits Sam just fine.

"Used, that's what I am. Just a toy. Just Wham, Bam, thank you Sam. See if the next town I drive you to has a water tower so you can have your friggin' morning after shower. God only knows why I fueled up the generator so you could even have hot water. I'm just a saint, I suppose. Now, if I could just get this A/C to run..."

Most of it comes back, then, the last months on the road, the end of the world, and the eerie way things haven't really changed that much, not for them. Dean's hair. Dean's hot new hair... Oh shit. Dean dragging his sloppy drunk and horny ass out of the car. Pinning Dean and his hot new hair and even hotter new brain against the wall while Dean fumbled with the lock, and...making a mess in his boxers. Dean making some kind of remark about being rode hard and put up wet when he tosses Sam onto the bed.

Yeah. Shit.

Dean keeps putzing with the thermostat, glances over his shoulder at Sam now and again like Sam's supposed to be listening to him, but the pounding between his ears...ohshitohshitohshit... still overrides most of what's trying to go through them.

A flash of red lightning through the curtains nearly blinds him, takes a circuit around his brain before high-tailing it down his spinal cord and into his gut. Fuck. High-tails it right back out. He lurches to a stand, eyes clamped shut and staggers in the direction he assumes to be the bathroom.

He's not at all thankful Dean fired up the generator when the bathroom light flickers on and he gets a good look at the brown hard-water stains in the toilet right before he paints them yellow. 'Cause, yeah, he was so needing that extra little push.

He's not sure if the clunk and rattle accompanying his retch and sploosh is evidence that he maybe swallowed a bucket of bolts while he was out of it or the sound of hail on the roof. Turns out to be neither when a cold rush of air shimmies down his back, and he cracks open his eyes to see a fine white powder blowing out of the register. Some of the dust, or what the fuck ever it is, lands in his eyelashes and refracts the light over the sink into shiny little colored haloes. Rainbows chased by a musty rust-flavored stench he wrinkles his nose against.

The cold air starts to chill the sweat on his brow and between his shoulder blades, mirrors the icicle of panic he's gagging around already. Pin pricks of dread skate down his stomach on beads of dirty sweat, pool in the waistband of his filthy boxers, and he crab walks back against the side of the tub, braces against it in his eagerness to peel the evidence away. His feet keep slipping out from beneath him when he tries to lift his hips, and he collapses in defeat, waits for a second wind that doesn't come attached to a wave of nausea.

One hand pressed into his forehead, he gropes blindly behind him for the faucet, grateful for the engineering genius of city water towers when he turns on the water, grimacing as he realizes the knobs are fashioned like a daisy wheel of women's legs. Dean's apparently holed them up in a brothel.

That should be funny.

It isn't.

His breath rakes in and out of his chest, too fast from the shock of cold tile against his back, punch of remembering at the forefront of his mind. The water's a little rusty but clears up in a minute, and true to his word, Dean's got the hot water heater running, too. Ain't hot enough.

Groaning, Sam draws his knees up to his chest, his bare feet leaving slick trails along the floor as he presses himself into the corner between the tub and the wall.

"Shit." He turns the water off again without getting in, hears the pipes groan at the sudden change in pressure, and starts to lever himself up, braces against the sink for a long moment, head tilted up just enough to glare at himself in the mirror between his sweat-soaked bangs. He's not getting in the shower without at least grabbing a clean pair of underwear out of his bag. He's not shy, not with Dean, but he's not putting these shorts on again, ever, once he gets them off, and he's not about to face Dean in just a towel. Not today. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.

Cold air from the vent swirls around behind him, cold from every angle like whatever's meant to keep it warm has been jerked away suddenly. Sam's a little surprised Dean's not standing behind him, gloating about getting the A/C running and demanding retribution for his trouble in some form of blatant ass kissery on Sam's part. Not that Sam can blame him for keeping his distance.

He crawls up the doorjamb and slides out into the main room, a shit-eating grin forced onto his face, best attempt at sheepish apology. It falls back into its scowl position when he finds Dean sitting on his bed, back to Sam, his shoulders slouched, and facing the window. It's the shoulder slouch that catches Sam's attention, turns his grin around, because that is not the posture of a man who's just single-handedly restored the convenience of refrigerated air to the best little whore-house in...well, wherever the hell they are. He thinks it's still Texas, not that it matters.

And Dean's shoulders don't do shuddering, shaking, jerking the way they are now, at least not that Sam's ever seen. If he has seen it, then it's most likely one of those memories he's blocked out, because he... Hell, it's wrong, that's all he knows. His stomach lurches again, this time on nothing but whatever emotion it is he's trying to swallow back.

"Dean..."

When Dean doesn't answer, Sam does his best dash to the other side of the room, crooked shuffle-step to spare his throbbing head, until he's between Dean and the window, looking down.

Dean's face is white like he took a hit from an angry canister of baby powder, completely dusted over except for a little half-moon shape under his eyes where he must've closed his lashes against the blast. Lightning flashes again, and there's a glint on the side of Dean's face Sam knows cannot be a tear track. Except it totally is, a fact Sam barely registers before Dean keels forward into his stomach.

Sam catches him against the front of his t-shirt, just dumb struck enough that his hands pat awkwardly over Dean's back in a half-hug before he even realizes he's doing it or has a chance to question what he's supposed to be consoling. The rain pelts against the window, blowing sideways against the side of the building, hard enough to smack the glass like a whip crack. Sam's head jerks from the sound, and maybe that's what clears the fog. Or maybe it's the way Dean's fucking clawing into his hip bones with tightening fingers, his entire body wracked with the twisting of his shoulders against some invisible bind. At any rate, Sam gets it like a sledgehammer between the eyes.

Mold. Mold out of the ducts, all over the room, all over Dean, and...

"Fuck!" He drops to his knees and nearly topples backward when Dean's leaning weight shifts with him. Sam pushes him back against the bed frame, watches in horror as Dean's head lolls on his neck, mouth gaping open while his chest convulses. Holding him up by fisting in his t-shirt, Sam leans forward, catches just a bleary glimpse of reflected lightning under the white-powdered eyelashes and presses his ear to Dean's mouth. Not even a fucking whistle.

"Dean!" He's pretty sure the t-shirt tears when he starts shaking his brother, feels a give beneath his fingers that makes him claw deep enough to leave tracks in Dean's skin. He shakes again as the iris disappears from Dean's eye. "Where's your inhaler? Dean!"

It should not be possible for a dude to be mostly unconscious and still look the collage of guilty, sheepish, embarrassed, and apologetic that Dean pulls off just then, but for once Sam's so friggin' grateful for all the months they've spent in comfortable silence, speaking whatever language it is brothers learn in the backseats of old cars on long highways. He doesn't need actual words to know Dean's left his inhaler, and the whole rest of the friggin' case, in the car, probably too busy lugging Sam's drunk ass in to give it a thought.

Sam presses Dean's, now lax, body down into the carpet (which is probably moldy, too, now that he feels it under his knees) and squints out the window as water sheets over it despite the edge of the eave he can make out a good six feet from the front of the building. He feels a smidge of guilt behind his belly button at wanting to call Dean a stupid fuck for leaving the inhaler outside, but figures he gets a by this time, since he's pretty sure what he's about to do makes him one as well. Standing, headache mostly forgotten, he presses his face to the glass, cups one hand over his eyes in an effort to see through the steady stream of water.

The car's not in front of the room, but he thinks he can see the front office sign battering against the wind just a few doors down. He falls back from the window into the bathroom and tears the shower curtain down from the rod, best he can do in a pinch. It's not big enough to cover all of him, but it'll have to do. Lofting it up over his head and pinching it together in front of his face, just enough of a peephole to see where he's going, he opens the room door. It blows in hard enough to knock him back with an oof against the wall, but he ducks his head and shoulders into it and goes out.

He's wet before he even clears the door jamb, the pickled egg stench of diluted acid thick in the recycled air pocket he keeps around his nose beneath the shower curtain. He squints against it best he can, and despite the pounding in his chest that tells him to dash out as fast as he can to minimize his exposure, he turns, taking the time to note the number on the door, (13. He's not amused) before closing it tightly behind himself. It won't do him any good to race out in search of Dean's inhaler if he can't find his way back.

Another gust of wind and accompanying wall of rain staggers him against the siding as he turns toward the office. Grasping the curtain tighter, even though he's already soaked through, Sam heads down the front walk toward the office.

The sign is suspended on chains from the eaves, and it disappears from his blurred vision for several long, heart-stopping seconds only to drop down suddenly when he's nearly beneath it. Were he not hunched against the storm, it would most likely have hit him in the forehead, and wouldn't that have been a twist of fate? To survive Hell and the end of the world only to have his head bashed in, corpse melting into a puddle of goo on the sidewalk while his brother suffocates in a shady motel?

He rounds the corner next to the office and breathes a sigh of relief. Dean's baby currently occupies the manager's reserved car port. Sam will grant, this once, that it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. He rushes around to the driver's side and strangles a sob in his throat when he realizes he forgot the keys, but in desperation, he looks through the window and finds them still in the ignition. Dean's been doing that a lot lately. It's not like anyone's going to steal it.

It doesn't take him long to find the inhalers. He grabs two spares because he can't remember when was the last time Dean used it or how to tell how much is left. He's about to turn back into the storm and run back to the room when he thinks better and climbs into the driver's seat. The car can stand a little rust. Sam can't.

Fishtailing through the parking lot, he drives right up to number 13, doesn't even bother with the shower curtain as he dives inside.

Dean hasn't moved from the carpet where Sam left him. In fact, Dean isn't moving at all. "No...nonononono...no." Sam doesn't even register the carpet burns, dampened flesh stripping away as he falls to his knees. Yet, he feels the stab of protectiveness as water drips off his sopping hair and into Dean's face, because that's fucking acid rain he's dripping for Christ's sake. He's already fumbling with the inhaler, trying to fit it in his hand so he can trigger it with one and hold Dean's head up with the other, when he realizes it won't do any good.

Dean's lips are already blue-tinged, his forehead waxy-looking, and the little lines of exertion crinkling his brow and the corners of his eyes are just...gone, not smoothed away or pressed out by some inner calm, just erased. Like it's easy to just make it all go away. There's a whole lot of empty in the world leftover from what went away. But the biggest, darkest void is right here on this carpet.

His hands shake so hard he almost drops the friggin' inhaler, and then, when he doesn't, he almost throws it across the room anyway, because he doesn't fucking know what to do. Dean probably needs a breathing tube, but even if Sam had one he'd have no idea how to use it.

"Shit!" It's either instinct or desperation or one inspired by the other, but Sam's got all that muscle and physical strength from powering on, and if he can't finesse his way through something, then brute strength has always been a good last resort. He feels a little awkward, but Dean's mouth is already open. Sam forces his thumb into the side of his brother's jaw just to move his teeth out of the way, tilts his chin back, and pinches his nose. He probably takes a bigger breath than he needs, but goddammit something is getting through there. Clamping his mouth over Dean's, he blows, feels Dean's nostrils expand beneath his fingers. His own cheeks puff with the resistance. Dots swim behind his eyes the way they used to when they were kids trying to blow up punching balloons. He remembers being the only one who could ever do it by mouth even before they knew about Dean's asthma, how friggin' proud he'd been to blow up his own and then one for Dean. But this air doesn't move.

He's held off pulling away for another breath as long as he can when he makes a last ditch effort, steels his cheeks. Dean's chest rises, then, not a lot, but something gets through. That's all Sam needs. A way in.

He draws in another deep breath, then closes his throat off and puffs the inhaler into his mouth. Then he seals Dean's mouth again and forces the medicine into his lungs. He holds it there for a second, Dean's chest just a fraction of an inch higher off the floor than before, then backs away. Forgetting to breathe again for himself, he waits while Dean's lungs deflate. It's a slow leak, just a little whisper of a whistle behind it, but it gets out. He takes another breath, this time just for himself, and waits some more.

After a second, Dean's belly starts to twitch and roll. Sam's not sure if it's Dean trying to breathe or throwing up. It seems too weak to do either, but it's progress, he tells himself as he expels another puff of mist into his mouth. A second forced transfer leaves him trembling as much as Dean, but he's convinced the second breath came easier than the first. Just a little.

Sam pants. An annoyed grunt escapes clenched teeth as he flips his dripping hair back away from Dean's face. Suddenly, the little tremble in Dean's belly becomes a full clench, and his entire body arches against it. A long, thready hiss of air trickles past Sam's fingers, and when it stops, Dean bucks forward, barely missing Sam's chin with his head.

He doesn't miss anything with the yellow, foaming vomit that bubbles out of him, but Sam keeps his gorge down, the thumb at Dean's jaw keeping it propped open and turned to the side until it all spills out. This time Dean coughs before the next splash of vomit boils out, and Sam doesn't even care that it covers his arm, splashes onto his leg.

When Deans stops gagging, his coughs mostly dry and tight, Sam places the inhaler between his lips and counts, "One, two, three...puff," sighs with relief when Dean responds by taking a breath on command.

Behind them, the air conditioning unit makes a clunk, and Sam lurches to unplug it before it can spit out any more of the mold spores from the ductwork. Should've thought of that right away. Thought they were being so careful...

Sam's skin crawls now, this eerie feeling like everything is poison, polluted and clinging. He hoists Dean up, over his shoulder and carries him into the bathroom. He shuts the door almost as an afterthought, already turning on the hot water in the sink, and then the shower. He wants as much steam as he can get, doesn't know how long the heater's even been running. One hand under the shower to test the temperature, he decides it's safe, adds a little more cold as a precaution, and lowers Dean into the tub, propping him far enough back to keep the water on his chest and legs and out of his mouth and nose. Sam pauses just long enough to strip off his soaking t-shirt and shorts, then climbs in, pulling Dean up against his chest. He's more concerned with getting the steam in Dean's lungs and the mold off his skin than about the itch he can already feel in his legs from the acid burns that will surface in a couple days.

Peeling off Dean's t-shirt, he plops it onto the floor beside the tub, and the heavy, sodden way it just splooshes to the floor registers in his ear and settles in his bones. It reminds him of the deer, of poking through her entrails looking for explanations; why she lived; why she had to die; alone. These are just clothes, something they shed like lizard skin and leave behind. There's nothing in the pockets, because they carry nothing with them. Nothing for anyone to find and know they were here. No one to find them. Dean propped against his chest, barely breathing, is the only thing keeping Sam from being completely alone. For all the fighting and begging for his independence, he's never really been alone. Alone is scary. Scarier than Hell.

But Winchesters don't do afraid, keep being forced to practice at it like piano scales, but they skip out on the recital. His head falls back against the wall, eyes shutting against the dark. One hand stays on Dean's chest, feels the breaths start to come deeper and more steady. When Dean sleeps, stubbled cheek against Sam's pec, Sam sleeps, too.



They're too tired, been running on something less than fumes and more than gumption for longer than either can remember. Five steps away from the end of the earth is as far as they make it before they fall, not afraid of whether there be dragons behind them. They've been there and done that, don't have plans to do anything else without sleeping first.

The fever overtakes them while they sleep, and it's almost too much to wake from. Somehow, between the searing heat and Dean's body shaking beside him, Sam cracks his eyes open. One of them. Barely. They feel cemented shut, crusted over with matter that works its way between the lashes when he tries to pry them apart and starts his eye to watering enough to free it up the rest of the way.

Disoriented, his limbs like lead, he falls on old habits, presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. Feels like dirt caked over his forehead. Feels like, but scraping it away stirs an itch under his skin that claws its way out and trickles into his eyes. His fingers come away sticky, and it's too dark to see, especially with just the one eye open. The tang of iron's strong enough to taste.

"Dean..." Sam doesn't recognize his own voice, can't honestly remember when he's last needed it. The only thing that answers is his pounding heart.

"Dean!"

#

He heads west as fast as he can go without red-lining the tachometer, both hands tight on the steering wheel. Dean's still wearing his wet jeans. Sam didn't want to chance cutting them off, so it's plenty warm inside the car, musty as an old gym locker, but Sam doesn't open the window or turn on the blower. What used to be just the grey bleak of the landscape looks like something more sinister, black decay underneath a dusting of lighter spores like powder makeup on the face of a clown. The open highway's never been this claustrophobic, and he wonders if they climbed out of Hell, death by blood and fire, just to have the world smother them under a pillow. Inside the car's the only place safe and familiar, the only place Sam has control, and he doesn't want the world coming in. Besides, too much noise drowns out the wheezing. He's not going to let himself forget again.

When Dean wakes up, Sam feels his eyes against the side of his head, braces his jaw a little tighter against it. He doesn't look. It's not Dean's fault, except the part where the dumbass left his inhaler in the car, but there's no one else to blame for the way Sam's heart's been pounding in his chest for the last two hundred miles or the throb in his joints from bracing against whatever's trying to tear him apart. Dean's got asthma, but Sam's choking, and it's pissing him the fuck off.

"You look like shit," he says without looking. Sam doesn't have to look to know. Dean sounds like shit, so it doesn't really matter if he looks it, all smells the same. "I'll stop when we get to Waco. Go back to sleep." He's more scared than surprised when Dean does.

He doesn't actually stop in Waco, but just the other side of it, outside the Woodway subdivision. Not bothering to wake Dean, he finds a pharmacy from which he takes way more than he hopes to ever need but somehow doesn't feel safe leaving without, and then spends half an hour in the Super Kmart getting new clothes and raiding the electronics department for a cigarette lighter adapter. It wouldn't normally take him that long, but he's got something in his eye, a bit of grit or dust or something. Makes it hard to focus.

He blinks and swallows, a constant drip in the back of his throat from his tear ducts trying to flush out his eye.

Dean's awake when he gets back the car and gives him a look somewhere between shell-shocked and 'you got some 'splainin' to do, Sammy.' Sam doesn't stare back long enough to decide how much of it's the asthma and how much is residual from being molested by his baby brother. Instead, he fishes through his cart and tosses a couple boxes across the seat along with the fresh clothes even though Dean's jeans have already air-dried.

"Since you're awake, I got a project for you. I need you to rig that to run off the cigarette lighter. I got an adapter that should work."

Dean clears his throat and sits up slowly, trying to figure out what Sam's thinking with a silent sigh of relief Sam only "hears" in the softening of his jaw. Dean doesn't want to talk, and for once, Sam's inclined to agree.

"What is it?" His voice is rough, tired, but still rings with brotherly sarcasm, as he turns the plastic container over in his hands. Sam's a little surprised Dean doesn't recognize it, but then, Sam somehow managed to block out Dean's Achilles heel entirely until it kicked him in the ass. "Popcorn popper?" Dean ventures. He pulls out a piece of tubing, makes a face that says 'guess not' before trying again, this time with a little twist at the corners of his lips. "Breast pump?" He tries to waggle his eyebrows, but it's unconvincing, especially with the one held on by scar tissue. "Home colonoscopy kit?"

Sam tosses the rest of the stuff in the back of the car and slams the door. "Something like that. Can you do it?"

"The colonoscopy?" Sam doesn't laugh, so Dean pulls a pliers and a wire snip out of the glove compartment, wincing when the movement seems to tax strained muscles in his chest and gut. "Yeah, it's a pretty easy rig."

"Good." It's all Sam can bring himself to say. There's more wagging on his tongue and trying to poke its way past his teeth, but it hasn't consulted with his brain at all, completely irrational and sure to start a fight. Dean doesn't need that right now, and Sam doesn't want it either, so whatever willpower hasn't been crushed by panic, shock, and adrenaline, he uses to button his lip. He's more out of practice at that than he thought, though, misses the comfortable silence broken with comfortable banter. Still, when Dean finishes his rewiring, Sam just says, "Good," again, and keeps driving like he can outrun what's already seeped in and burning through his veins.

#

All those days thirsting, scraping their tongues raw for just a drop of water, and now it pelts the ground in an endless deluge, painting the landscape shades of yellow and brown, edges a slimy black. Acid rain. Fire water. The world ended in fire from the sky, after all. Just not quite how they'd expected.

Dean's been ranting on the edge of consciousness since Sam awakened, and Sam's burning up himself. They're both scabby, sickly like stray cats, any exposed skin crusty and red.

Seems like, after Hell, a little fever should be just that. Small. But frailty's the one thing that makes this all real. Hell's about suffering without relief, and Heaven's... well, this can't be Heaven. Only the real world could be this paradox of bittersweet that comes from breaking and mending, falling and standing again. Only reality rewards endurance. In Heaven there are no tunnels. In Hell, no light at the end. And Sam has to believe there's a light here, somewhere beyond the clouds. They can't die helpless in a crypt after climbing for days. That's not how it works. It just isn't. They suffer, but they make it through. Always have. Have to now, too.

When Sam was fourteen, he and Dean both got the chicken pox. All their moving around had managed to keep them from coming in contact with it before then. Thing was, chicken pox are worse the older you are when you get them. Sam remembers too well long baking soda baths that did nothing to stop his skin crawling, and by the time the fever broke, he'd been ready tie himself behind the car and let Dean drag him down a gravel road.

Of course, he'd had it easy. Dean almost died. Always was prone to spiking high fevers.

Kinda like now. Both of them covered in acid burns and hot with infection, and Sam's watching Dean twitch in the corner. He'd prefer the gravel road.

Back then, there'd been bags of ice to fetch, calamine lotion to apply, bedsheets to change. There were things to be done to stay one step ahead of the crisis and the panic whirring in his belly like the gears of a windup toy teetering on the edge of a table.

Now there's nothing to do but wait. Call it a learning experience. If the view from the front of the crypt is any indicator, they have a whole new world to learn the ins and outs of. The first lesson's an out. If they make it through this, they'll know enough to stay out of the fucking rain.

He watches Dean writhe and curl in on himself, wonders who he has to bargain with to make it stop. Despite the Latin scripture engraved in the walls, wrought iron crosses atop stone pillars to symbolize a gate to the other side, Sam's having a hard time finding religion.

He's pretty sure they won't die here, though. A crypt is too convenient a place for dying. Winchesters never do anything that rational. Call it blind faith. Sam calls it experience.

#

He doesn't stop again until they're far enough into the Texas Hill country that it's mostly mounds between them and the horizon, not rotting trees and their dangling jellyfish tentacles of Spanish moss. Then he figures it's safe to pull over, high on a rise where he hopes it's driest. Dean hears the engine cut out the way a colicky baby knows exactly the second you've put him back in his crib. Straightening in his seat like he hasn't been sleeping again, Dean sheepishly uncurls his fingers from the front of his t-shirt where he's been tugging at the collar like it's strangling him.

"Hungry?" Sam asks, a spork and a couple cans of tuna in olive oil drop to the seat. Dean starts to shake his head, but Sam stops him. "Eat." It's an order, or at least he intends it to be, tries to mimic the inflection Dad always used when he said 'jump' to make Dean answer, 'how high.' It doesn't feel right, though. The part of him that's still powerless and loose, out of tune like a cat gut string on an ancient tennis racquet, wants to beg, plead, coddle, but the rest still twangs and twists in knots.

He makes a pointed glance in Dean's direction to be sure he's eating. He has to look away as Dean takes too-small bites, chews a couple of times, then pockets the food in the side of his mouth so he can take a breath, still not getting enough air without breathing through both his nose and his mouth. Sam can remember the colds he used to get as a kid where his nose got so stuffed he felt like he was drowning every time he tried to swallow, and he's exhausted just watching Dean pick his way through one can of tuna, remembering too well the weight on his chest.

Sam pretends he's just inspecting Dean's handiwork on the cord he rewired, not looking away so that he can get a decent breath. Dean doesn't notice, too busy reasoning out the size of bite to take, how many chews before swallowing to minimize the paralyzing seconds between when he can't breathe at all.

Sam waits until Dean's halfway through the second can of tuna, rubbing absently at his forearms and at his legs under his jeans before reaching in the back and pulling out the rest of what he got from the pharmacy. He doesn't meet Dean's gaze the whole time he's setting things up, though he almost asks Dean to read the instructions for him while his eyes refuse to stop watering.

Dean figures out what he's doing before Sam's quite finished, makes a noise Sam recognizes as understanding mixed with embarrassment. That's Dean's usual preamble to vomiting bits of macho mixed with damaged pride.

He doesn't. That's almost worse.

Instead, he watches Sam plug the nebulizer into the cigarette lighter and takes the breathing tube when it's offered without more than an eye roll.

#

West Texas should be safe enough. There was never much of anything there to begin with, nothing to rot and mold over, pollute the air, but Sam's well into the oil fields and still driving with his foot near to the floor when it starts raining.

Dean takes the nebulizer hose out of his mouth. Sam's been expecting it for the last hundred miles or so, constantly glancing in Dean's direction then back again like a Bingo player with ten cards all one number away from jackpot.

"It's raining," is all Dean says before taking another hit.

Sam doesn't answer. If he opens his mouth he's almost positive his tongue will snake out, forked, and barbed, and thirsty for blood. Reprisal. It demands reprisal for having stayed bitten between his teeth. Sam knows, if he speaks, he'll say something he's sure is more appropriate unspoken. It'd start with how Dean's health isn't a joke, and how he has to take care of himself. True, yes, but nothing Dean doesn't know, so redundant and pointless. Thing is, Sam doesn't know how far it'd go from there. He's pretty sure something on the order of, 'I don't want to be here alone,' would made it onto the table before he could turn it off. That's better unspoken, because this isn't about Sam. Not about Sam's health or Sam's sudden fear of alone.

Except it is--the Dean part of Sam, which is really quite a large chunk of the Sam pie.

So he doesn't answer right away. It pisses Dean off when he doesn't answer. They drive another mile or so in silence as the rain picks up momentum. To Dean's credit, he tries not to say anything else. He shifts around in his seat a dozen different ways, raises up and sits back down like his shorts are suddenly bunched awkwardly, makes sure the leather groans when he plops onto it, and Sam can feel him darting his eyes expectantly over, but Sam doesn't take the bait. Why would he? It's his trap.

The tube comes out a second time with a huff when Dean spits it out rather than removing it by hand. "Sam! It's raining."

"Really? I've had the weather band on all day, haven't heard a peep out of it."

"What the fuck's your problem?"

"I don't have a problem, Dean. You have a problem."

"And it's going to get better by driving until the tires melt off or the grill rusts out?"

"Maybe. If we make it as far as New Mexico before then."

"What's in New Mexico?"

"Katharine Heigl." Sam can't help the sarcasm. Dean deals out his fair share, but there's a reason Sam was on the debate team in high school. He just usually hones the barbs down a little before lashing out. Blunt works just as well on Dean, and Sam's feeling a little Cro-Magnon these days. "What do you think?" he asks. "The desert."

"Sam, find a place to pull over." Dean waits for the beat of a breath, but no more. "Now!"

Sam hits the gas harder, the little bit of space between his foot and the floor closing. "The desert, Dean. Clean air and dirt. No mold, no mildew..."

There's an off ramp ahead, and a turnaround under the highway, but Sam has every intention of going past it. Has to get to the desert.

Dean's hand closes over his on the steering wheel, a slow steady pull toward the shoulder that gets stronger and more insistent. "Sam..." Not an order, just a silent please left unspoken in the hitch at the end.

Sam swallows, feels his teeth grind in the back, but his foot eases off the gas, even while he fights to keep the car headed straight down the road. "A place where you can be safe." Huh. That doesn't exactly come out the way he intends, the last little bit an unsure whisper of a confession he hadn't even known he was about to make.

He deflates enough to turn off.

It's like that inch of control he gives up is the last one he has, and by the time the car rumbles to a stop under the turnaround, Sam's hands are shaking too much to turn the ignition off. The windshield wipers start to scrape and whine over the glass, the rain already puddled beneath them on the ground, but Sam doesn't turn them off, can't understand why the glass is still streaked and blurry.

Dean reaches over him and takes the key out of the ignition, smooth and completely in control.

He takes Sam by the wrist, hard. "Stop!"

"I did," Sam says, still focused on the windshield like he can will it to clear up just by staring hard enough.

Dean's grip on his wrist tightens even more. Caught in a trap...I can't walk out of, because I love you too much baby... Shit, Sam knows he's losing it when random lyrics start singing in his head.

"No. Stop this." Dean's holding his wrist so hard Sam feels the bones move around and fold together, tendons stretching, and it's better than the burn on the back of his skin. He can't help the little stutter of his eyelashes when Dean's grip tightens the cuff of his sweatshirt around his forearm, the rough fabric burns so good against the itch underneath. Dean must see, because he pushes the sleeve all the way up, says something under his breath, or maybe out loud, but Sam can't hear that. He's already busy tugging at his collar with his other hand.

"I said stop!" This time, just loud enough to end in a whistle, followed up with a sharp intake between his teeth. Sam stops, then, and winces more at the look on Dean's face than the sight of the raised red spots on his arms. He swears he doesn't remember scratching hard enough to make those scabbed-over lines between the splotches, but there's something under his fingernails that could be skin.

"You went out in the rain?" Dean asks without looking up from the mess Sam's made of his flesh. The only real question is the implied, 'how could you be so stupid?' since the answer's obvious.

Sam copies his inflection exactly when he says, "You left your inhaler in the car?" Dean shouldn't be surprised. They walked into Hell together. A little rain is supposed to stop them?

Dean reaches a thumb up and across Sam's eye, and for a second, Sam can see the crease over the bridge of Dean's nose, the way his eyes dart over Sam's face, searching for something. Dean's thumb comes away wet, and the warmth of his palm over Sam's cheek draws attention to the cold, damp lines down the side of his face. Dean wipes his other eye, and Sam can't help but tip his head into Dean's hand, hadn't realized how much the irritation and the cold were clawing at him. And now, all he wants to do is claw back, hurt it more than it hurts him.

Dean won't let him, fixes those vice grip hands of his around Sam's wrist again the second he tries to scratch. "Dammit, Sam. Is there any place that didn't get wet?"

Sam wants to answer. Yeah, there's a spot in the middle, from his sternum to mid-thigh, that the shower curtain kept mostly dry, but even that tingles, since all his nerve endings seem to run cross ways through it. Legs to brain. Brain to fingers. Fingers to legs, to arms, to chest, to forehead. Everything twitches either with the pain or the need to do something about it, and a shotgun blast of rock salt is starting to sound downright soothing.

So, Sam doesn't answer, but it doesn't matter. Dean's already got his door open. The nebulizer falls off the seat and onto the floor, makes a little slosh as the medicine spills out.

"Dean!" It's supposed to sound like, 'get your ass back in here and take your medicine,' but it comes out more like, 'where are you,' when Sam realizes his eyes have flooded over again. He hates the way it sounds, like he's lost and afraid, because he just friggin' drove them across the state of Texas, saved his brother's life, and got him medicine for the love of God. He's got everything under control. Except this itch, and the fact that he can't really see anything more than a foot in front of his face.

"Dean!" That one does not have permission to squeak out, but it does. Kittens have made more confident noises. Back when there were kittens. Dean answers with a rustle of paper. Funny how the rest of the world graduated to plastic bags, but pharmacies and liquor stores stuck with paper.

The crinkling sound makes his scalp crawl, like a fine-toothed comb being yanked through his hair.

He turns his head with a jerk when the driver door opens, a crazy wobbling movement like the eyes of those dolls that open and close depending on how you tip them, sort of tottering around a focus that isn't quite clear. Then Dean's thumb breaks through the murk again, inches from his face, and Sam turns into it, seeking anything steady enough to stop the world sloshing clumsily around him.

"Hold still." Yeah. Easier said than done. Sam's doesn't know how to float without kicking. But Dean doesn't really give him the chance to disobey. Fingers prying apart your eyelids is one of those things that makes you freeze whether you want to or not. Sam barely sees the end of the syringe in the very furthest corner of his vision before Dean depresses the plunger and floods his eye with saline solution. He almost jerks away, just reflex, but melts into the cool wash after a second.

Too soon, the flow stops, and the fire flares back up again. He can't even blink against it, as Dean keeps his lids pried apart and leans in. Dean looking in his eye, looking at his eye is the most bizarre kind of detached sensation. Sam can't help trying to meet Dean's gaze, but Dean doesn't see him, just his eye, has this look on his face like he's dissecting a bug or trying to read someone's broken handwriting.

Dean must feel him starting to squirm under the press of his fingertips and his gaze, because he leans back with a sigh. "Looks like you didn't burn your eye, but you've probably scabbed up your eyelids. The way you're tearing up, I'm surprised you didn't wreck us." He looks over his shoulder and up at the sky as the rain stops, and just before his eye starts to water and smart again, Sam notices the way Dean's throat hitches around a cough he's trying to suppress like a yawn in church. A pat on his thigh, somewhere between nudge and caress, and Dean says, "Scooch over. I'm driving. Don't wanna be stuck under here all night."

He's barely scooted an inch when Dean drags him back by the waistband of his jeans. He doesn't look back, though he's got a, 'what the hell' forming on the tip of his tongue. It's a good thing, because Dean cuffs him on the back of the head.

"Off!"

It takes Sam a second to figure out the thing Dean wants 'off' is his shirt. At least, that seems to be the message of the hands tugging the hem out of Sam's pants. He bats Dean's hands away partly because... well, that's his brother, and he's pretty sure he's supposed to protest. His hand's the only thing protesting, though. His hips slide back an inch on the seat so Dean can get the shirt off.

The brush of rain-dampened air over his chest and stomach makes his breath catch and his pulse speed up by several beats a minute.

"Better?"

"Yeah." Answering pulls the stopper out on the breath he's been holding, and his stomach twitches out of sync with his chest.

"Good." Dean drops a tube of something Sam figures is burn cream into Sam's lap. "Now, stop scratching. You'll get an infection."

Neither one says it's probably too late for that.

#

Turns out there's a good holistic remedy for acid burns, something a little more practical than not fucking getting rained on in the first place. A good old salt of the earth cure that Sam finds by accident, in the first days out of Hell, while Dean's unconscious, delusional with infection.

Of course, Dean, the king of reconstituted, trans, gamma, nuked, and recombinant, wants nothing to do with all-natural.

"Dude, get that stinkin' shit away from me," he grumbles, batting Sam's hand away from his forehead without opening his eyes.

"Welcome back to the land of..." Sam pauses, eyes fixed on the faint red glow coming from under the slab door of the crypt. "...slime and Tootsie Rolls." He presses one of the candies past Dean's slime covered lips, against the protests, and sits back against the wall. "C'mon, eat up. 'ts the only thing I could find in the car that might still be edible. They say Tootsie Rolls never go bad. I think I read there's still some of the original batch around somewhere."

Dean's jaw starts to work slowly. Two days of force-fed Tootsie Rolls and holy water, and Sam's managed not to choke or drown either of them yet. Of course, Sam can't take all the credit for not choking his brother. Dean's had a lot of practice eating from his death bed. Probably enough to write a dissertation on how the zombie finds brains to eat without any actual brain function of its own to guide it. Sam's had more practice feeding Dean when Dean can't feed himself than he cares to remember.

Dean's better today. His jaw actually stutters a little at the mention of the car, and Sam knows what he wants to ask. "Your baby's still right where we left her, parked under that old railroad bridge with all the graffiti on it. Remember? You made that joke about Prince."

"Mmmm," Dean's jaw works faster, his eyes fluttering open, pale red gleam under his lashes a little too much like the hungry glare of hell's hounds. After a hard swallow, he finishes. "Mmmovie was fucked up."

"Yeah, it kinda was." Sam doesn't ask how Dean ever ended up watching a rock opera. They had that conversation a lifetime ago, before they took on Hell and won. He's not exactly waxing nostalgic about the good old days.

He doesn't tell Dean the car's fine, but the road from here to there is gone. They've never been confined to the beaten path, anyway. And if Sam hadn't been forced to stagger through the upturned graves and rubble, he'd never have fallen into that puddle of slime.

Serendipity's all they have, since all they know is gone, and planning for the unknown is, well, impossible. But they can try. What they learn today might come in handy tomorrow.

#

The drive through the night isn't so bad. Sam dozes soundly, mostly by choice, because sleeping seems to be the only way to ignore the rash spreading up his limbs and goose-stepping through his nerve endings with pointed bayonets. He wakes halfway to find Dean poking through old maps with a pen light. He's vaguely aware of the chill of sweat trickling over his collar bone and down his chest by the lingering dreams of fingertips tracing the trail. Part of him wants to ask where they're going. If Dean's got the maps, then he has to have a plan, but the rest of him is busy staying half asleep and not being sorry the fingertips he's dreaming of just might be Dean's.

Morning lightning retreats over the desert in a way he feels against bare skin. The way he used to feel the static on a balloon by the movement of hairs on his arm.

His senses keep surfacing against his will while he's busy squinting against the light of day. He's hot in his skin, not tired but not ready to come out of the cocoon he's awakened into. Ignorance is bliss, they say, and there's not a whole lot of bliss to go around these days. Sam'll take what he can get.

The leather squelches behind him, his back alternately sticking to the dry spots and sliding over the spots he's already dampened with sweat. He's a little surprised Dean hasn't scrounged up a towel in the name of saving his upholstery, smiles a little to himself that some things really are more important to Dean than his car. He's good with that, too.

His jeans still make him want to scratch through the denim, rough enough to irritate, but too loose for any decent friction. Well, loose in every place except one. He wonders how much shit Dean would give him for shucking those, too. It's not like Dean's never seen him in his underwear before. Shifting around in the seat at just the thought of being rid of the jeans, Sam's boot kicks against something on the floor with a hollow plastic thunk. The nebulizer, no doubt. Dean would never have bothered to pick it up off the floor. He has a nasty habit of not taking care of himself. Most days, Sam doesn't mind doing it for him. They've had some of their best conversations while one or both of them is knocking on Heaven's door.

Seems to be happening a lot since Heaven's door got slammed in their faces.

#

Long stringers cling to Dean's eyelashes. A grimace works its way over his cheeks. Yeah, Dean's doing better, if covered from head to toe in slime for the last day and a half and just now realizing it is better. He moves his hands up to his face as if to wipe away whatever gak is caked there. They get as high as eye level, then turn back and forth, long lines of the crud lacing together. He gets the same expression on his face he used to get when Sam was little and hawked into his hand instead of a Kleenex. Heck, kids that age don't know when they're going to puke half the time. How was Sam supposed to know the difference between a harmless sneeze and the mating call of the loogie slug?

"Don't pull the eew face, Ernest. That stuff worked wonders on the acid burns and kept your fever down long enough for the Cipro to get an upper hand on the infection."

Dean clears his throat like he's been eating the gunk and not just wearing it. Sam's not saying it isn't possible to eat it. He's actually been kinda thinking it might be a good form of slow-release hydration, but no, he hasn't been using his unconscious brother as a guinea pig.

Besides, it tastes like shit.

#

"Dean!" Sam scrambles up to a sitting position, bangs his head on the sunblind which has made it its mission in life to fall halfway open every time they stop. Sam puts a hand to his forehead, still squinting in case there's blood. How the hell had he not noticed until now that he can't hear Dean wheezing? "Dean!" The pain in his head melts away under his hand, and he looks into the driver's seat.

Except he can't see anything. He realizes with a jerk that his eyes are glued shut, and trying to force them apart with just the muscles in his eyelids and brows makes them grate over his corneas, brings tears welling out at the corners. He almost falls out when the door opens behind him, but Dean catches him, props him back up in the seat while he tries to get a handle on the panic kicking him in the stomach.

"Where were you?" It's pissy, and he knows it, doesn't really care.

"Good morning to you, too. Had to take a piss. Fucking nebulizers and inhaled steroids..."

"I can't see." That's not supposed to be an accusation, but it sounds like one even to him. It's not Dean's fault he picked just that second to wake up all alone. Not his fault that alone is not as appealing to him as it was when he was fourteen and went through a lot of lotion.

"I'm not surprised. You've got enough shit in your eyelashes to spackle a shower stall." Dean's hands are back on his face, and for some reason, that loosens the constriction around Sam's chest so he can breathe again. He can feel Dean's thumbs brushing over his cheekbones, and tips his head back as they slide cautiously up toward his eyes. "Stop trying to open them. If you scratch your eyes, we'll really have a problem. I've got a pan of water heating up on the manifold. Just sit tight while I get a warm rag."

Sam nods, but Dean takes a second to brush the bangs off his forehead before tapping him on the chest, and Sam doesn't really care about getting his eyes open anymore. Not if it means Dean takes his hands away. He swallows against the cold shudder left in the wake of Dean's touch when the door creaks open farther and Dean steps away; swallows again when the hood slams shut and the gravel crunches closer and closer. Turning toward the door is half to meet Dean and half to adjust his pants, which are still too fucking tight.

God, it sucks to be him just then. The only part of his body that isn't itching with burn is itchy for a whole other reason, and he can't scratch it.

"There something wrong with your throat?" Dean's practically in Sam's ear when he says it, presses a warm cloth over his eyes and puts Sam's hand over it to hold it in place.

"Huh?"

"Ahh, nothin'. Just if you keep swallowing like that, I'm really gonna start wondering what it is you're trying not to say." A soft snick, and Sam smells a hint of medicine in the air. He jumps when the first cool trail falls onto his shoulder.

"I'm..." And he swallows again. "I'm just a little freaked out, ya know? Cuz..." The gesture he makes toward his face catches in between Dean's shirt buttons on the way up. The t-shirt underneath is damp. Warm morning. He takes a second too long to pull his fingers free, rubs over the cloth on his face. "Cuz I can't see."

A dry laugh. "No, you're not. We've been here before. You know I got your back. Something else has you all wound up."

Sam tries to deny it by letting his head loll against the headrest and away from Dean. Like it makes his point to look away when he's already got his eyes closed.

"Look, Sam..." A warm hand smooths over the trail of cream on his shoulder, leaves a trail of goosebumps sprouting in its wake. "Sammy. You don't have to talk to me about whatever the fuck's on your mind, but you keep up the silent, whatever it is you've got going on, and I'm gonna tell you the story about the time when you were two and you went through that exhibitionist phase." A snicker and more rubbing up and down his arm.

Sam self-consciously jerks his arm up out of his lap, doesn't want Dean going any farther down, and pretends to adjust the cloth over his face. Dean makes a shrug Sam can hear.

"Suit yourself. So, anyway, you were like two. And I don't know if your Pampers were bunching or what, but you decided that you weren't having anything to do with them. You'd let Dad strap one on ya, and then we'd turn around and see you streaking across the yard displaying all the family jewels. Dad'd laugh and run after you screaming, 'don't look, Ethellll,' and you'd scream bloody murder the whole way back inside. Now, it was all fine and good until one day this dog showed up in our yard. Dad found your diaper lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, as usual, and looked out the back door. Saw that dog out there and made like lightning." Dean's voice has a soothing quality to it, like the medicine, rolls over Sam's skin like the cream, over his shoulder, his back, and Sam's tempted to just let him go on, wonders if he can get away with shivering and leaning closer.

"...So, Dad thought the dog was gonna eat you or something, but by the time he got out there, the dog was crouched down taking a dump, and you were just watching, circling all around and around like you were figuring something out. Before Dad could stop you, you squatted right..."

Oh, shit.

"Fine, okay. I'll talk. Just do NOT finish that story. What do you want me to talk about?" His voice cuts out on him as Dean's hand slides up over his shoulder to the back of his neck and along his collar bone. He will not swallow, will not swallow, will NOT swallow. Except he does. Dean reaches across to Sam's left thigh and turns him around so his feet are on the ground outside. Sam can't help the little whimper he makes when Dean's other hand slides up his neck to the back of his head and bends it forward so his head and the cloth over his eyes press into Dean's shoulder. Dean doesn't seem to notice, already applying cream to his back and right arm.

"I don't know. Seems like that brain of yours is always working over time on some pointless information. You could always translate that into dumbspeak. I been driving all night. Could use a nap."

Sam laughs, and that's a mistake, because his nose is pressed against Dean's throat, and Dean smells...well, he smells like stale sweat and medicine, which just makes Sam want to hold on for reasons he refuses to acknowledge. So, he laughs again. If his eyes weren't already glued shut, he's pretty sure this is the part where they'd be rolling back in his head. Between Dean's hands on his back, that sensitive little spot right between his shoulder blades, and the tickle of his longer hair against Sam's ear... ngh. He takes a breath, holds it, and starts to speak, no idea at all what will come out.

"I don't know what to say. This is bizarre, dark and hot, itchy. Kinda like those junior high boy-girl parties where they'd draw names out of a hat and throw you in the coat closet with some girl you never met."

Dean huffs. "I knew all those Saturday night tutoring sessions were a load of crap. You little horn dog."

"Yeah, well, it was what it was, for what it's worth between fourteen-year-olds."

Dean leans back suddenly, the cloth plopping onto the seat. "Wait a minute. When you were fourteen, we were living in Minnesota, and you were going to that parochial school of Pastor Jim's. You're gonna tell me you were feeling up sweet little girls in pigtails and Mary Janes?" Dean slaps the cloth back onto his shoulder, smacks Sam on the back of his head so it falls onto the rag. Sam adjusts it by nuzzling against it until it slides far enough up Dean's neck to be comfortable.

"Not really. Most of the time nothing much went on in there. We just waited 'til they opened the door."

"But what if she was hot? C'mon. I know you didn't let 'em all give you the slip."

Dean has moved his hands around to the front, smoothing cream over the peaks of Sam's chest. Sam laughs, ticklish, but he adds a snicker on the end, like it's the secret and not Dean's hands that make him bubble over.

"What? You were a smooth talker, were ya?"

"Let's just say, the whole thing about girls not being turned on by brains is a lie."

"Is it now?"

"Totally is. If there was a girl I really wanted to kiss, I always used the same line."

"You told 'em you were dyin', right? That always worked for me."

"No. Actually, I'd say something about how I read that there are neurons in the brain that help you locate your partner's lips in the dark. Then, they'd usually pretend not to believe me, and I'd prove 'em wrong."

Again, Dean sits back on his haunches and Sam pretends he can hear the shit-eating grin spreading across his face. "For real? So, like, you can find any chick's lips in the dark?"


"Maybe."

"Maybe. So sometimes you m..."

It could be cheating, waiting until Dean's talking to prove his point, but Sam figures the recently blinded are allowed to jump the gun a little. He doesn't miss, not completely. His top lip connects with the corner of Dean's mouth, and he drags himself to center, slow and with a long intake of breath that pulls Dean's bottom lip between his teeth. He holds it, breathing hard and more than aware that Dean's hand is back on his chest. Sure, it was thrown up partially in surprise and partially as a defensive gesture, but Dean's not going to let Sam fall out on his face. Fingers sliding up, still greased with the medicine, Dean's hand winds up behind Sam's neck, and still Sam breathes. It'd take just a thumb under his jaw to break Sam's grip, but Dean doesn't go there. His wrist stops bracing and falls down into the groove of Sam's collar bone.

This is the point where Sam would shut his eyes if they weren't already glued together at the lashes. Going with the feel, he drops in closer, tilts his head, and breathes in sharply as he lets go with his teeth. Dean follows with his chin, opens his mouth slightly, and Sam presses in, licking over both lips and then between, small little sips of Dean's breath and spit on the tip of his tongue.

His hands trace their way up Dean's arm to his shoulder, fingers wide as they move into his hair. Dean's shuddering under his touch, and Sam's torn between breaking the kiss with a Dean-like remark about who the chick is in this situation and pulling Dean up between his knees where he can get a better angle.

Except that's when he realizes. Dean's not shuddering. He's wheezing.

Sam breaks away so fast he can hear the stringers of spit stretch and snap. He doesn't know why he cringes. Probably his id telling him he deserves to have his ass kicked. Instead, Dean presses the cloth over each eye, wipes away the last of the glue, and pats him on the shoulder before standing.

"Guess it really does work," he says.

Sam opens his eyes in time to see Dean walk away.

Part Three